The Pros and Cons of Three Major Blog Platforms

The Pros and Cons of Three Major Blog Platforms

By M Kennedy, Founder of eReleases

Thinking about blogging? Starting a new one? Or just wanting to switch platforms? Choosing the right blog platform can either have you on cloud nine or nursing a migraine. Do you choose one for ease of use, or one with more options to make your blog sing? I’ll go over the three major ones and list their pros and cons to help you decide.

WordPress

Looking for a community and lots of options for your blog? Then go with WordPress. You have two options – an online WordPress blog or a free self-hosted version. Users enjoy hundreds of different ways to present their blogs when it comes to visual design and usability, and a variety of ways to interact with others in the community to expand their knowledge (or just complain about trolls). Despite the crazy amount of ways to customize blog posts, WordPress is relatively easy to use for beginners.

On the negative side, those looking to just write and post will find that it may not be quite that easy. Having all the options tends to freeze some people up solid. If you hate ads, you might also be disappointed that WordPress – unless you install it on your own domain name – places ads on your blog that you have no control over.

Also, if you’re not hip with HTML and CSS, you may have trouble fully customizing your self-hosted WordPress blog, as some basic programming knowledge is needed.

Blogger

Blogger is backed by Google, so expect a user friendly interface with constant upgrades. In fact, they’ve even added a template designer so users can edit and design their own blog – all without the use of HTML or CSS! Because of Blogger’s popularity, there’s a pre-established community of writers available for you to take advantage of if you need advice or tips.

Experienced bloggers might get incredibly bored with Blogger, however, as it’s only just for writing and posting. Some others have expressed irritation with the platform’s autosave, which has led to a loss of a lot of information at inconvenient times.

Tumblr

Tumblr is becoming quite popular as a happy medium between sites like Twitter and Facebook with their short updates, and full-length blogs. While there are all kinds of Tumblr’s out there, you’ll rarely see the 2,000 page tomes that some bloggers write on their WordPress or Blogger blogs. Tumblr is the most recent it-child of blogging and has a reputation for creative blogs. If you’ve seen Grumpy Cat lately, chances are the meme links back to a Tumblr account somewhere. Tumblr is well loved for it’s ease of use (you can easily post from your mobile, for example) and for it’s “reblogging” feature, which allows you to share other Tumblr blogs on your own Tumblr with ease.

New to blogging? It can’t hurt to create an account and play around with all three platforms. Just make sure you commit to one platform, and don’t post the same content across multiple platforms, or your SEO could suffer.

eReleases’ founder Mickie Kennedy

By Mickie Kennedy, founder of eReleases, the online leader in affordable PR distribution since 1998.
Grab your free copy of The Big Press Release Book, a must-read for the small business professional.

Follow eReleases on Google+, Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter.